Musings of an Englishman living in the USA. Job hunting, writing, random thoughts and anything else that strikes my fancy.

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Monthly Archives: October 2015

A quick note by way of introduction may be required here. For quite some time now, certain members of the Richmond WriMos have been trying to persuade me to watch the CW show Supernatural. I have relented and am now embarking on watching Supernatural via the wonders of Netflix. This series of posts will simply be my first impressions, almost stream of consciousness style, presented in the form of the time elapsed in the episode and my thoughts expressed as bullet points. It’s effectively live tweeting the episodes except I don’t have to stick to 140 characters or fewer. So without further ado here’s my take on:

Season 3 Episode 15 – “Time is on My Side”

00:56 – Unsurprisingly, as we barrel through towards the end of the season, our previouslies montage covers a lot of ground, most notably Dean’s demon deal, Lilith, Ruby (who I tend to think of as Black Canary, but that’s what three seasons of Arrow does to you) and Bela.

01:26 – Our teaser opens with two plastic surgeons, doing what fictional plastic surgeons do best – being total douchebags. I’m okay with one or both being the Inevitable Teaser Death.

02:00 – Douchebag Surgeon #1 just got bundled into the trunk of his car by a mysterious black clad figure.

02:42 – Our surgeon appears to be now wandering through hospital corridors wearing a black robe that’s clearly too short for him (seriously, if there was an iota less fabric, his testicles would be on display for all to see), that’s the least of his worries as he’s bleeding from a wound that we don’t see but is gnarly enough to make the nurse freak out.

03:13 – Our heroic leads are torturing somebody for information. I assume it’s either a demon or vampire, as the torture is splashing him with (assumed holy) water, which isn’t quite what water boarding is, and is essentially an annoyance for those of us of a less supernatural nature.

03:24 – It’s obvious to me that Lilith is going to be the contract holder, because that’s how TV works. Kinda surprised the brothers Winchester haven’t figured that much out themselves.

04:57 – Demon is exorcized offscreen because he wasn’t important.

05:37 – Teaser surgeon was the Inevitable Teaser Death, suffering from an acute case of Liver-torn-out-itis. that can be a real bitch.

05:43 – The tearer apparently died in 1981 per fingerprint records.

05:57 – Dean suspects zombies, and is surprised Sam is taking a break from soul saving attempts to go on a hunt. He approves though.

08:05 – The brothers are interviewing a guy who had his kidney stolen, and woke up in the urban legend cliche of a bathtub full of ice.

10:09 – Sam and Dean do the exposition conversation thing about an organ-stealing, possibly immortal Doctor Benton who Daddy Winchester had once hunted down and taken the heart out of. Apparently such impromptu cardiac surgery didn’t take. I’m more distracted by the burger Dean’s trying to eat as it actually looks like the ones in the pictures on fast food menus.

12:07 – Doctor Benton doesn’t seem to believe in anesthetic, as he starts his scalpeling on a runner while the dude is conscious. It looks like he’s taking a heart though, so I guess niceties aren’t necessary. Benton has surprisingly civil bedside manner for a dude with a stitched together face.

13:50 – Bobby gets in touch with the boys to let them now that he’s tracked down the ever-loathsome Bela. Dean immediately wants to follow up on that lead. Sam seems less keen, which strikes me as odd. I assume the terrible-haired one is up to something.

14:15 – Yep. Sounds like Sam has been thinking like a lawyer. He wants to steal Benton’s immortality idea for Dean. I guess the logic is that if Dean can’t die, then his soul gets to stay out of hell.

14:56 – Dean points out the minor detail that if Dean backs out of the deal (which immortality kind of does) than Sam dies. Which kind of defeats the point of Dean having made the deal in the first place.

15:45 – Looks like the boys are splitting up, which never backfires, just ask Fred Jones or Velma Dinkley.

16:34 – We follow Dean meeting with Bobby’s old hunter/hermit “friend.” Who’s more than a little paranoid.

18:03 – Paranoid hunter, who’s name is Rufus, but has now been dubbed “Black Burt Reynolds” by my viewing companion is much more amenable to a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue.

19:27 – Black Burt Reynolds knows stuff, and has a somewhat nihilistic viewpoint on what the end is for hunters, basically they “ain’t got no happy endings” (Insert your own massage parlor joe here.)

20:14 – Sam’s in a rental car and is hunting for Doctor Benton in some brightly lit woods.

34:07, Dean shoots Benton before he can scoop Sam’s eyes out. It doesn’t kill the Doctor, but it does mean that sam doesn’t have to wear an eyepatch any time soon.

35:21 – That’s kind of innovative. Dean stabs Benton with a knife through the heart. It (predictably) has no effect n the immortal doc. However, the chloroform that Dean had dipped the knife in gets pumped throughout Benton’s bloodstream, and so the Doctor falls unconscious.

36:14 – The boys have Benton strapped to his own operating table. the doctor tries to wheedle his way out of it by tempting them with the immortality formula. Sam calls Dean off to the side for a private conversation. I think I can guess how this will go…

36:54 – Sam contends that the immortality thing would buy them time. Dean flat out states that he’d rather go to hell than live like Benton as an inhuman monster.

37:56 – Doctor Benton has been buried, chained up in an old refrigerator (which, as Indiana Jones has taught us, can ride out nuclear explosions) pretty deep underground. I imagine he won’t particularly enjoy not being able to die given that circumstance.

38:58 – Bela broke into the boys’ motel room and shot what she thought was the two of them in their beds. It turns out that the bed’s are occupied by blow up dolls. I assume that Dean expected her to steal the motel receipt back at 30:27.

39:33 – Yeah, he knew. And that plant Dean spotted at 30:21 is used to keep hellhounds away.

39:51 – So it seems that Bela made a demon deal of her own ten years ago to have her parents die. And now it’s come due, hence the anti-hellhound measures…

40:43 – Seems Bela tried to buy off her soul with the Colt, but the demon said that wasn’t good enough, she had to kill Sam as well. And now she has a mere two minutes before her time runs out.

40:52 – Dean points out that, even though it was most definitely undeserved, if Bela had come to them sooner with the Colt and asked for help, they would probably have been able to save both Bela and Dean.

41:07 – As I assumed the demon that holds Dean’s contract is indeed Lilith. Who apparently holds every deal, including Bela’s.

42:04 – And Bela’s now done for.

A strange episode this one, in that it almost feels like two ‘B’ plots grafted together. The idea of using immortality as a “get out of Hell free” card is definitely an interesting one and it’s smart for the show to countenance it, but the organ-harvesting doctor story feels like it’s been done to death, or at least variants of it have. Off the top of my head, I can think of Eugene Victor Tooms from The X-Files and Ronald Meltzer from Angel. Admittedly, they’re not exact matches but close enough.

The other stuff exploring some more of Bela’s backstory was more interesting, though mostly as set up for the season finale next episode. I recognized that there were trying to make Bela at least a little bit sympathetic, which made me assume that she was not long for this mortal coil. Having her be the victim of a demonic deal and thus a parallel to Dean was a nice touch, it also helped explain some of her motivations more. I was also left rather flat by the fact that Lilith was the demon holding dean’s contract, simply because there really weren’t any other candidates since Ol’ Yellow eyes was eliminated.